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Tips on attracting
Butterflies, Hummingbirds and Bees: Plant lots of colourful and scented flowers, around May-July is the best time to try and attract. Hummingbirds are not easily attracted, and are only found from Edmonton south (about), around Calgary you can find the Rufous Hummingbird, the Calliope Hummingbird, the Ruby-throated Hummingbird and the rare Black-chinned Hummingbird. Up in Edmonton you can only find the Ruby-throated. Another way to attract hummingbirds is to use Hummingbird feeders.One plant that is very good for attracting butterflies is buddleia, it mostly attracts Canadian Tiger Swallowtails and other Brush-footed Butterflies. If you want to have butterflies breeding makesure to plant foodplants so that caterpillars can feed and breed. For the best results you should use wildflowers, even though some Cultivated flowers will work. Birds: Planting berry bushes and trees such as Mountain Ash will attract Bohemian Waxwings in winter and a few of these trees may even persuade an American Robin to overwinter for a bit longer. Low bushes and shrubberies and nesting boxes on the side of fences or tree trunks will encourage nesting. Virginia Creepers and other thick vines on the walls are a common place for sparrows to nest. Bird feeders hung in the right locations and bird baths will keep migrating birds in your garden longer and any bird who finds it will "spread the word" to others and soon your feeders will be covered with them if you are in the right sort of area, but it might take a week or two for any to notice it. Common seed feeder birds include Pine Siskins, Downy Woodpeckers, House sparrows, Nuthatches (White-breasted Nuthatcheses if you live near deciduous trees or Red-breasted Nuthatches if you live near coniferous trees.) Try a variety of different seeds and see which ones the birds like best. Feeders should be hung on low branches more or less in the open so they can be seen, in winter you can attract large flocks of chickadees and redpolls by placing sunflower seeds in piles at the bottom of a tree or fence, but the same thing applies, make sure it can be easily noticed by a passing bird. I will cover Squirrels at a later point, for now I am working on filling in most of the pages on this wiki (alot of red writing around...). Ponds: Ponds can be used to attract a variety of pond-living insects and even work as a bird bath. Try to add many water plants, such as water-lilies, locus flowers, water hyacinths (be careful with these, they spread quite a bit) since they will oxygenate the pond and attract insects which provide food for turtles, frogs and fish. Also, including some form of shelter near ponds will provide cover for turtles and frogs. Pesticides: If you want a healthy garden full of insects and other animals make sure you''' never '''spray pesticides, if you have some creature that is decimating your plants and trees consider a different plan (try looking on a gardener's website, I will not put how to control pests here) The main problem with pesticides is that it can kill everything that is beneficial. How? Well.... Bug is sprayed and poisoned by pesticides. Bird comes along and eats bug, resulting in bird getting poisoned. Then some scavenging animal will come and feed on dead bird, scavenging animal gets poisoned, and so on. The scenario is normally something like the above, normally while you kill the pests you also kill beneficial creatures in your garden, and you don't want to do that. Other: You will normally want to make sure that there is not too much shade, because flowers will not grow as well and butterflies, bees and other sun-basking creatures will not or rarely visit your garden.